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To: PJ-Comix; PGalt
So will the many mainstream media outlets who were hyping the validity of the Steele dossier now apologize?
Rush likes to poke fun at Bill Clinton’s plaint about the lack of a “truth detecter” to rebut Rush’s telling the truth about him. But in fact the lack of a truth detecter is precisely the problem with the journalism cartel.

But the fact is that there is a mechanism in law for having the courts serve that function - the libel suit. Trouble is, in 1964 the Warren Court disabled libel as a political “truth detecter" with its (unanimous) New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision. And that has allowed “the MSM” to “go ballistic” without feedback from reality. Thus, no apology from those who participated in the attempted coup against us by parroting whatever the deep state wanted it to say. As long as nobody can touch them financially, why would they have to accept reality?

The solution can only be that Republicans sue the MSM - for more money than the MSM can count - in direct defiance of the Sullivan decision. “What!” you will say, “Sullivan merely enforces the First Amendment when it prevents government officials from harassing journalists with frivolous lawsuits!” Or as Justice Brennan put it in Sulivan, ". . . libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment.”

But according to Justice Scalia, that is rank poppycock. Why? Because the First Amendment, because the entire Bill of Rights, was intended and understood to be conservative by its framers and ratifiers. The Federalists won their desideratum - a strong federal government uniting the 13 states - only by promising the addition to the Constitution of a bill of rights. The Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people” expresses the sentiment of the Federalists that the rights of the people were in the Common Law, and nowhere comprehensively catalogued in a way which could be embedded in the Constitution.

The first eight amendments “enumerate” rights - but they did not create them. Those rights are only those rights which history suggested tyrant might violate for self-aggrandizement. The rights enumerated are neither created nor changed by the Bill of Rights. Assaying to change a right would have invited controversy, and controversy - and suppressing controversy over the then-novel Federal Government was the sole actual intent of the Bill of Rights. And in fact, libel (and pornograpy, and other) restrictions on “the” freedom - freedom as it existed before the Constitution - of the press were never questioned in court on First Amendment grounds until the Warren Court’s Sullivan decision. Which, incidentally, touched only libel suits by some people - a novel limitation on libel suits by public officials. This, I submit, is a mark of judicial legislation.

Thus Justice Scalia - who made his chops with his solo dissent in Morrison v. Olson which, rather than the eight-vote majority opinion, is now considered dispositive - dismissed the conceit that Sullivan is “settled law.” But the other factor not considered in Sullivan is the fact of “the MSM” - or, as I prefer to refer to it, “the journalism cartel.” That there should be such a thing as CNN or The Nation magazine is entirely unexceptionable and protected freedom of the press. But 1964 was the acme of the conceit that three broadcast networks - networks dependent on the sanction of the federal government for its licenses were objective and trustworthy. That was only four years after the Nixon-Kennedy “debates” were telecast, and TV’s political influence was a ticking bomb which exploded over the course of the Johnson and Nixon Administrations.

The journalism cartel, like the mafia, “doesn’t exist.” But two facts, taken together, make doubt of its existence woefully naive:

  1. The wire services in general and the AP “wire” in particular constitute virtual meetings of all major US journalism. The AP was in full flower by the end of the Civil War.

  2. People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
The journalism cartel assumes - as do the FCC and the FEC - that journalists are objective. A great many people, including many FReepers, assume or demand that journalism be objective. In fact, the conceit that journalism is objective has been propagandized by the journalism cartel and by schools so effectively for so long that it is a planted axiom in much political discussion. But altho objectivity may be a laudable goal, it is not a state of being, and certainly is not demanded or assumed by the Bill of Rights. No one can state every known fact - “Ain’t nobody got time for that” - and yet “Half the truth is often a great lie. Consequently the people must judge who to believe, and who to trust to proclaim relevant truth about what.

Except that everyone - not just the Covington kids but politicians and judges as well - is entitled to the reputation his/her actual behavior has merited. Libel law is the legal way to vindicate that right. The alternative - dueling - has been rejected by America for most of two centuries.

Freed from the constraint of libel law, the journalism cartel has systematically libeled conservative politicians and judges. Leaving “liberals” unscathed. Why would that be? The answer I see is that news is not “Everything went as planned,” but “Wow! Nobody expected this disaster!” Journalism is on the lookout for bad news about society. Journalism is negative, and negativity is “objectivity” only to the cynic. But nobody can be cynical about everything. The opposite of cynicism is naiveté and, per Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the opposite of society is government. To claim that journalism is objective, knowing that it actually is negative, is to be cynical. And to be cynical about society is to be naive about government.

The combination of cynicism about society and naiveté towards government has an explicit name - it is socialism. Because of the difficulty of actually being objective, the natural default of journalists is to go along and get along with the other members of the journalism cartel. “Objectivity” becomes, not a word for neutrality, but a synonym for socialist ideology. Likewise the other words for political virtue - “liberal,” “progressive” (there are no Americans who are actually conservative), “moderate,” or “centrist” - are assigned the same meaning which the cartel assigns to “objective.” The only difference being usage, the cartel requires that journalists be called “objective” and that all other socialists be described with those other synonyms for “objective.”

The upshot is that the Sullivan decision compromises the rights only of people who oppose socialism, since socialists are never libeled. Sullivan is the enabling “legislation” of Political Correctness. Sullivan makes the journalism cartel members think that “the press” is their title of nobility or of priesthood. Sullivan and the journalism cartel must be destroyed. Republican politicians must sue for, and SCOTUS must grant, the ability to vindicate the facts - not opinions but facts - in court.


12 posted on 12/14/2019 10:28:39 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (Socialism is cynicism directed towards society and - correspondingly - naivete towards government.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion; All

Thanks for the ping/great post in a great thread.

Tyrant boy, Barry was so applauded by his sycophants. His smug “charter of negative liberties” is akin to “defensive jihad”.

https://securitypolicylaw.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/MyersJoseph.Quranic-Concept-of-War.pdf

Quite possibly the most “toxic male” in the history of this great republic.

A Marxist/Mohammedan POS.

2020 is days away

See clearly citizens


14 posted on 12/14/2019 3:48:15 PM PST by PGalt (Past Peak Civilization? Remember the Alamo! Remember the republic?)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion; All

He basically wiped his rear end with the Constitution especially the Bill of Rights.

He also wiped out...possibly the greatest civilization in history...The British Empire...UNBELIEVABLE accomplishments for citizens on a tiny island with one word...

Colonialists. (see how easy that is) Hey...let’s try “deplorables”.

Many criminals never stop unless incarcerated or eliminated.


15 posted on 12/14/2019 4:07:21 PM PST by PGalt (Past Peak Civilization? Remember the Alamo! Remember the republic?)
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